Olympics

Every two years, thousands of athletes from hundreds of countries convene for the Olympic Games, a four-year event whose Summer and Winter Games alternate biennially in different cities around the world. The Olympics, which was first held in the ancient Greek city of Olympia in the 8th century BC, was revived by Greece in 1896 and has since become the world’s foremost sports competition.

Political tensions between host nations and visiting countries have often added international pressure to the tournament, most notably during the 1936 Summer Games in Nazi Germany, as well as during the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., where the U.S. hockey team defeated the powerhouse Russian squad at the height of the Cold War. After the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow following the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union followed suit four years later in Los Angeles.

Diplomatic strain, however, has frequently taken a back seat to personal athletic triumphs. Michael Phelps returns to Team USA for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, four years after the swimmer broke the individual medal record with 18 golds and 22 overall in London in 2012. While he swims in a controlled, environmentally safe area, athletes competing in and around Rio's beaches are entering murkier waters, as the country faces other safety and financial issues ahead of its Aug. 5 opening ceremony.

Russia has again been embroiled in Olympic controversy leading up to the Rio Games. The country’s track and field team was barred from the 2016 Olympics by the International Association of Athletics Federations over an allegedly state-sponsored doping conspiracy. Though the International Olympic Committee decided against banning all Russian athletes in a subsequent vote, the IOC deferred the nation’s eligibility to individual global sports federations.

Brazil will pass the Olympic torch to South Korea, which is slated to host the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang. The torch will not travel far from there, as the baton will be passed to Japan for the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.